Housewife Memoirs: Positano, Sorrento, & Naples, Italy

Our stop in southern Italy to Positano, Sorrento, and Naples was the last port of our cruise (I'll elaborate more on the cruise ship itself tomorrow). I had read a lot about Positano, and I had originally hoped to see the island of Capri. But the way that our day worked out was even better than what I had hoped or planned out in my head.

Our driver picked us up at the port and I immediately knew that no matter what we did that day, it was going to be a great one. We had a lot of great drivers through out the vacation: Alexia, Kostos, Alex, Demitri, to name a few. But Pasquale, our driver in Napoli, was my favorite. He sounded like Luigi from Cars, and his english was superb enough that he kept cracking witty and sarcastic jokes that had us laughing the whole day.

Also, he was from Sorrento, so he knew all the secret spots to take us along the Amalfi Coast that I don't think we would have seen otherwise.

So we started the day off driving along the coast and cliffs of southern Italy. We stopped in Positano first, where we shopped along the cobblestone streets and admired the white linen dresses they had in the windows. We also dipped our toes in the Mediterranean one last time (the view didn't hurt either).

We spent the rest of the day in Sorrento, which is a little larger than Positano and just as beautiful. We ate at Johnny's where I had the best pizza of my entire life, and later we ate at Ugly Mario's, a secret gelateria in Sorrento owned by ugly Mario himself (a short Italian bald man who was a close friend of our driver). If you EVER find yourself on the Amalfi Coast you MUST go to both of these places if you want to experience true Italian decadence. I thought that Giolitti gelato in Rome was the best, but I would honestly say that Ugly Mario's (also referred to as David's) was the creamiest and most delicious gelato we had on our trip (and we had a LOT of gelato).

Besides the food, Sorrento has a lot of small streets that are just walking only, so we walked around and shopped. Chin bought his big purchase of the trip here, a handmade, Italian leather satchel for medical school! He was so excited and the bag is truly a beautiful, timeless piece that he'll hopefully be able to keep forever.

We did stop in Napoli (Naples) at the end of the day, just to take a look around. It's a very big city, with beautiful buildings comparable to Rome. However, the city itself is VERY dirty, and I didn't even feel comfortable sitting on a street bench or touching anything.

Overall, the Amalfi coast was beautiful, and I hope we get to go back someday and spend a week or two swimming in Positano and eating a lot more gelato and pizza in Sorrento.

A copy of St. Peter's square in Naples (this square was also designed by Bernini, who designed St. Peter's in the Vatican City in Rome)